I don't know, there's not a lot to say. It's a very average action RPG... and that's about it. It's not a bad game, mind you, there's just nothing really appealing here.

The game plays it safe when it comes to gameplay; it doesn't take any risks. Combat is standard click-'n-slash, augmented by The Witcher's combat stances for basic tactics. You have special abilities that amount to "knockdown", "rage", etc., that are upgraded through standard character progression.

I guess there's a lot of loot, complete with a near-infinite armor & arms permutations. Then again, I've never understood the appeal for oodles of pick-ups.

The writing is... average. Not really mediocre, but nothing in-your-face that's typical from Obsidian. The same goes for the voice-acting.

The music on the other hand, is pretty damn good. It's generic Oblivion, high-fantasy fare, but with more bravado and orchestration. Honestly, I wouldn't mind buying this game for the soundtrack alone.

Graphics are good. When I mean good, I mean it looks "sufficient" for the mainstream gamer, and doesn't cut corners with any aspect. Textures look bland and muddy, but there's still some definition to it; this a console game, really, not the Witcher 2. The shadows and lighting are rather impressive, however, and this definitely is the Onyx Engine's strong suit here.

There's been a lot of complaints over the control scheme with standard mouse & keyboard. Basically, if you tolerated the camera in The Witcher and KotOR, then DSIII isn't much different. It's leaps and bounds over NWN2, but still nothing intuitive enough for a quasi-isometric paradigm. I've heard that using an Xbox 360 controller works wonders, but makes sense considering the consolized focus.

Speaking of consoles, the interface is built for those playing ten feet away from the screen. Big font sizes and UI elements abound. It's really atrocious for all PC configurations, but most PC players should be used to this schtick by now.

Technically speaking, this is most likely Obsidian's most solid game. The Onyx Engine is relatively well-optimized and still looks decent and pretty; I'm running with all graphics on "High", 2x MSAA, 16x AF, V-sync @ 1366x768 on an ATI 5650. Haven't had any crashes, bugs, glitches of any sort, but this is still just a demo, however.

Overall, it's a standard game. Nothing to run out and buy immediately, but nothing to really piss at either. For an Obsidian game, it's pretty uninteresting and generic, and is really just "another game" that will most likely sell moderately and have an "average" critical reception, but nothing to really write home about. Kind of disappointed knowing the developer's reputation, but not really grossly pissed either.

Previews and early reviews have been pretty positive about the writing and story. Maybe the demo's not showing that potential. Hopefully somebody buys this thing and can tell us if the full game is any good. In any case, I never expected a game like Dungeon Siege III to be of the standards of the great RPG's of this era and at this very moment, The Witcher 2 is still fresh in everyone's minds, so that'll influence things, I presume.

For an Obsidian game, it's pretty uninteresting and generic, and is really just "another game" that will most likely sell moderately and have an "average" critical reception, but nothing to really write home about. Kind of disappointed knowing the developer's reputation, but not really grossly pissed either.

Actually, how can you even know that? For an Obsidian prolouge/opening it was actually pretty good.

I don't know a game that has similiar charachter progression. (I just guess you mean leveling here) Its about specalising your existing abilites instead of choosing new ones. It actually reminded me a lot more of Fallout than typical Action-Rpgs.

Black Isle (from which Obsidian partially descends) was the publisher of the BG games (and even then purely as a marketing label of Interplay). They were developed by Bioware. So no, it doesn't count. The only IE games that Black Isle developed were Torment and Icewind Dale 1 & 2.

Black Isle (from which Obsidian partially descends) was the publisher of the BG games (and even then purely as a marketing label of Interplay). They were developed by Bioware. So no, it doesn't count. The only IE games that Black Isle developed were Torment and Icewind Dale 1 & 2.

I meant as an example for an opening not representative of the rest of the game. Otherwise I would have said something on Torment too.

Also Feargus was actually a (if not THE) main driving force on the publisher side of the project. So not only as a label.

Played the demo. Not going to judge the game by the demo because the demo was pretty bad, but so was the last demo I played and I ended up loving the game.

The best thing I can say about the demo is I thought it broke my computer. My PC is usually lit up blue, but after starting the game the key board, mouse and PC all turned bright green. When I quit the game all went back to normal. So I restarted the demo and bright green again. So I played annoyed that my preferences were overridden. Later upon finding a horde of mercenaries everything made sense. Everything went from green, to blue, to yellow, to red, to Anjali’s death.

Not going to give the demo much credit, reminded me a little of Fable 2 and the first half of Fable 3. Nothing really exciting, but thinking I will give it a go since there is nothing else is out right now that interest me.

That just about sums up the first Dungeon Siege game (by Gas Powered Games). The feeling I was left with after playing that game was horribly wasted potential.

It was a game with a beautiful seamless game world without any loading screens at all, where building interiors and exteriors existed in the same world space (so none of the usual deal where a small shack has a palace-sized interior). This beautifully crafted game world was essentially empty, though, and devoid of a story other than "get to this castle at the far end of the continent to take revenge on the bad guy that burned your farm", or some such.

Sure, you tripped over new nameless, irrationally aggressive creatures every 2 steps, but they were pretty much all the same, and combat got boring after 2 hours. The whole game only contained 4 fights that stood out from the rest. No NPC interactions other than some NPC monologuing at you to give you a quest (which there wasn't many of). Sure, it was an Action-RPG, essentially a Diablo II clone, but the end result still turned out to be boring to play.

So if Obsidian can keep the same beautiful seamless game world and fill it with actual memorable RPG content then this game might be able to live up to the potential that the original had but squandered.

But I guess we'll have to wait until the full game is out to know, since developers seem to have the odd idea to put the most boring and dull levels of a game first, and subsequently make a demo of that. So I'll just skip the demo to avoid disappointment.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, stoffe, but it looks like Dungeon Siege III will have save points instead of being able to save whenever you want. They don't work in the demo, but there are unactive save points.

Lack of the ablility to save really stinks in the demo. Playing demo as Anjali again and got stuck 10 feet above the ground when switching between human and fire form. After trying everything I could think of to get back at ground level I just quit. I will not switch form again on stairs.

well, having played the demo, there's not really a lot to say quite simply because there isn't anything truly special about the demo. about the only thing that remotely got me interested is that the story was starting to gain some momentum right when demo suddenly ends. other than that, the demo was just really kind of bland in every way possible.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, stoffe, but it looks like Dungeon Siege III will have save points instead of being able to save whenever you want. They don't work in the demo, but there are unactive save points.

Urgh. There really is no excuse for using checkpoint saving nowadays. Just forces you to redo a lengthy chunk of content over and over and over if you run into trouble or want to try something different, or need to stop playing for a while to do something different when not being near a checkpoint, which is just a boring waste of time. :/

But at least they can't use the "Save often and in different files" hint to work around a bug-ridden crash-prone game then...

Quote:

Originally Posted by mimartin

got stuck 10 feet above the ground when switching between human and fire form. After trying everything I could think of to get back at ground level I just quit. I will not switch form again on stairs.

There is no flight or jumping in the game, then? Strictly 2d movement?

Granted, I wasn't really a Dungeon Siege fan in the first place, and was definitely turned off by the fact that Obsidian had their franchise-killing hands on it this round.. IGN's review was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me.

Granted, I wasn't really a Dungeon Siege fan in the first place, and was definitely turned off by the fact that Obsidian had their franchise-killing hands on it this round.. IGN's review was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me.

Eurogamer has a different opinion, though. Not the best of games, but not a bad one, either, according to this reviewer and it gets an 8, where IGN gave 6.5:

Quote:

But don't think this means that Dungeon Siege III is a brain-dead game. It's just an adaptive one. Because your character has up to 11 abilities, as well as charged versions of each of those, and each is best used in a slightly different scenario, trying to play Dungeon Siege III perfectly is a totally absorbing dance of glossy particle effects, small victories and even smaller failures.

Not a game worth the full retail price, me thinks, but I may buy it eventually to see how it plays. It's been some time since I played an Obsidian game, I miss them.

yeah, Gamespot's review wasn't a whole lot nicer. in short, if you like loot, play this game. if you care about *anything* else in your RPG experience, you can skip this one and be better off for it.

seems to be an interesting trend that Obsidian has going for itself now: release a good game, then a mediocre one. rinse, and repeat.

me thinks that Obsidian would be better off if they would just focus on one product at a time. you can make money off of lots of mediocre stuff, but you'll make more money by producing an amazing product that everyone wants to play. least ways, that's how i see it.

Despite reviews to the contrary, the story has been engaging, at least thus far. I cannot tell to what degree the plot varies depending on which character you choose at start up, therefore it's entirely possible that the Lucas path is a lot more emotionally salient than say, Anjali's. It's been years since I've played DS2 and the expansion, but I do recall that the franchise has a history of weaving lore into the environment and Obsidian definitely continues that tradition.

Combat is challenging. Even on normal mode. No getting around the fact that the game is a button-masher, but it's not a mindless button-masher. Blocking, dodging, changing stances, and using special attacks are all critical to survival and the odds of doing so seem to be directly related to how quickly you can learn to do those things effectively. Expect to die a lot in boss fights.

A lot of loot. Seriously.

Choice and consequence, influence, and deeds (aka perks) - Decided to spare a boss last night. She looked at me like I was stupid and said, "Are you ****Ing crazy? My boss is going to send TWO of me next time". But then I got a pretty cutscene suggesting that showing mercy might also pay dividends. Got a perk - sorry Deed for helping somone that helped me earlier, but also have the suspicion that I'm going to get screwed over for that choice.

Companion AI is not a source of extreme frustration for once. Heals me when I fall. Changes stances on her own to be more effective. Picks up coins so that I don't have to.

Cons:

The dialog, while well written, is delivered rather woodenly. FWIW, I think this is intentional, but still.

The game manual is 5 pages. I eventually figured out that a lot of the info I was looking for could be found in the Lore menu, but something in the manual directing me to the Lore menu would've been nice. On the same note, there are some important things, like ressurecting companions, that don't get any mention (so far as I can tell) but really should.

A lot of loot. Seriously. And the naming convention kinda sucks. For example if you have Awesome Boots and then later find another pair of Awesome Boots, you can't assume that it's the same item. Both pairs of boots modify the same stats, hence the same name, however the pair you just picked up may be significantly stronger or even weaker than the pair you have. This translates into an almost mandatory trip to the inventory screen everytime you find something cool...which is about once every 30 seconds.

Isometric is cool when the graphics suck. Frustrating as heck when they don't. They obviously put a lot of detail into the creatures and enemies. Too bad I never get a chance to examine them.

Other thoughts:

Obviously there is still lots of room for things to go sideways, but thus far the story has been great. I have a few ideas about certain people and events and I look forward to seeing how things pan out.

The lack of loading screens is nice.

No crashes or freezing. The game is incredibly stable and smooth.

Low-level baddies go from being a serious challenge to a cheap, plentiful source of XP in only a couple of levels. Skirmishes at level 4 gave me a run for my money. I hit a group of five guys with one round of super blade kill thingy at level 6 and express surprise if any are still alive when I turn around to go back to where my companion is waiting. On the flip-side, FINALLY managed to kill a particular boss on my fourth try, only to find out that the fight wasn't over. Bosses continue to be a challenge and as I said to a friend, "if this is normal, then hardcore can go **** itself".

1) There was at least one situation where the pre-fight save point was too close to the actual fight area

2) Bad guys that hang out near save points that are dead before you save are sometimes alive when you reload (did I mention that you die a lot?). Good news is that they sometime drop fun things and they are always low-level.

Thanks to Achilles I ended up getting Dungeon Siege III on the 360 instead of the PC. Originally the demo seemed dull and boring on the PC, but first off the level system was tweaked in the demo to show more powers/skills. So the battles in game were not an easy button-masher as the demo made it appear. You have to be a strategic button-masher to survive. The final boss battle in the demo was a real pain in the actual game.

I’m going to take some exception to Achilles writing that the dialog is well written. It has been interesting so far, but when Katarina (one of the playable characters) was given a quest to rescue someone and the last thing the quest giver says to her was something like “once you kill the bad person don’t forget to set the good guy free” that is just lazy writing. Isn’t the point of a rescue quest to rescue the person? I mean why tell Katarina that? If the quest giver happens to think the playable character is that stupid why give her the quest at all.

Overall I do not believe the writing is bad. The voice acting on the other hand is terrible. Agree with Achilles on this one. I think it is on purpose. My only problem with that is why make the playable character’s voice just as monotone. Also I didn’t know Katarina was Orlesian.

Besides the boss fight in the cave, before getting a companion, the save points have not really been a issue. The save points are plentiful and not really needed when your companion has the power and the AI to heal the playable character.

So far, I’m very happy with my purchase. Spent 6 hours on it last night and even woke up an hour early this morning to spend an hour on it. Beside the dialog system, the game really reminds me of Fable 2, especially the combat system. I also get a little Jade Empire feel to the story as I don’t believe everyone is telling my Katarina the entire story.

Isn’t the point of a rescue quest to rescue the person? I mean why tell Katarina that?

Chauvinism?

Made it to level 22 last night.

Achieved mastery with one of my abilities, which is cool, except that using empowered abilities drains power rather than focus. And not just one orb like healing, but all of it.

Kudos to Obsidian for not making the abilities god-like, but I did get a little frustrated when I realized that one flavor of pain-in-the-ass bad guy seems to be immune to one of the abilities that I've come to rely on (pro-tip: if they have a shield, they can block).

Also, "tricks" that can be used for some boss fights are intentionally discouraged in others. Dodge is essential for survival, but I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it's nigh impossible to dodge effectively in a mine shaft.

Speaking of that particular fight, I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the "oh, you have a sword and shield? No ranged attacks? That's too bad. The next 30-45 minutes is really going to suck for you" fight that they threw at me. On one hand I had a kind of grudging admiration that I was being forced to change my tactics. On the other hand, twice I had that particular bad guy on the verge of being dead only to blink and have both party members (my companion and I) wiped out, largely because my melee guy was useless, which sucked.

At this rate, I should be finished tonight (the level cap appears to 30 and I can't imagine that they would let the game go on for too long after that cap has been reached). This would put game play at less than 30 hours and I've been doing all (but one ) of the side quests.

I'm going to laugh when you hit level 30 and you're only half way through the game... although I'm doing all the side quests too so we'll see how it goes. Which side quest did you not do?

I was supposed to destroy an enemy camp on the side of a mountain and thought I was on my way to do so, but inadvertently progressed another quest to the point that I became cut off from that one. Instant failed side quest

By the time I realized what had happened, I'd already leveled up 3 times so I wasn't about to go back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KinchyB

EDIT... P.S. - Shouldn't you be working? You don't have a smartphone... if you had a smartphone you could be in the forums 24/7

Aren't you suppose to be at corporate training? And I'll get a smartphone right after I get facebook.

Don't hate!! My tactic rocks... beat Rajani (or whatever her name is) on the first try!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achilles

I was supposed to destroy an enemy camp on the side of a mountain and thought I was on my way to do so, but inadvertently progressed another quest to the point that I became cut off from that one. Instant failed side quest

By the time I realized what had happened, I'd already leveled up 3 times so I wasn't about to go back.

Doh!! I'll be sure to keep an eye on that. Ohh, and i found out last night how to get hints on where to go for quests instead of wandering aimlessly, I was happy!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achilles

Aren't you suppose to be at corporate training? And I'll get a smartphone right after I get facebook.

Who said I'm not at corporate training? And I'm holding you to the FB = Smart Phone deal... hope you know what you got yourself into...

I finished Dungeon Siege III for the second time. First this is based on me playing the 360 version of the game. The game is not as terrible as some of the reviews make it out to be. Basically it reminded me a lot of Fable 2 only instead of dancing and farting the playable character actually has a voice. Of course the voice acting makes you long for dancing and farting.

Combat…as far as combat goes this is Fable 2 except to go from guns to swords you have to use a different playable character (which means a different save game). So far I’ve only played as Katarina. She is a range weapon character that does a little magic on the side. The guns are also exactly like Fable 2 right down to the animations.

The environments are also similar to Fable 2 and Fable 3, but on the beautiful side of things. Too bad with the view you are allowed there is no opportunity to really enjoy it (again just like Fable 2 and 3).

Story was nothing great, but I was entertained and Dungeon Siege III offered a bit of a escape from reality which is what I look for in a game. I was not looking for the vidya equivalent of War and Peace from Dungeon Siege III. I did expect a little more from Obsidian though. Don’t want to hear any Obsidian fanboys talking trash about BioWare’s stories after that final boss though.

My chief complaint is the game is short. Finished my last playthrough in about 13 hours and I know I did all the side quest because I got the “Perfectionist” achievement. It was my second playthrough, but even my first playthrough only took 17 hours and I only missed one short quest about the fishing hole.

Overall, I would recommend the game to anyone that either loves Obsidian games, someone that enjoyed Fable 2 or Fable 3 or a BioWare fanboy that just wants some ammunition the next time an Obsidian fanboy is talking trash about a BioWare game. Seriously not great, but I did have fun playing it and plan at least 3 more playthroughs.

The environments are also similar to Fable 2 and Fable 3, but on the beautiful side of things. Too bad with the view you are allowed there is no opportunity to really enjoy it (again just like Fable 2 and 3).

Agreed

Quote:

Originally Posted by mimartin

Story was nothing great, but I was entertained and Dungeon Siege III offered a bit of a escape from reality which is what I look for in a game. I was not looking for the vidya equivalent of War and Peace from Dungeon Siege III. I did expect a little more from Obsidian though. Don’t want to hear any Obsidian fanboys talking trash about BioWare’s stories after that final boss though.

Troll

Quote:

Originally Posted by mimartin

My chief complaint is the game is short. Finished my last playthrough in about 13 hours and I know I did all the side quest because I got the “Perfectionist” achievement. It was my second playthrough, but even my first playthrough only took 17 hours and I only missed one short quest about the fishing hole.

You aren't going by the time on the save file are you, because I'm almost certain it's inaccurate.

FWIW, they did the same thing with AP: Shorter length but lots of encouragement for multiple playthroughs. I kinda like it, so long as they don't start doing it on every game.

Started my hardcore run last night. So far, there seem to be more mobs. The mobs are not only larger but have a more diverse mix (3-4 "hit points", a guy in heavy armor, a couple of archers, and a couple of guys with rifles). Too soon to tell, but I think this confirms my suspicion that the only way to get the level 30 achievement is to also get the hardcore achievement.